Posts Tagged: "PTAB"

On August 2, inventor advocacy group US Inventor held a webinar on provisions of the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership (PREVAIL) Act that are intended to curb abuses impacting small business patent owners at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). While most panelists on the virtual call acknowledged that the PREVAIL Act wouldn’t solve every problem threatening the U.S. innovation ecosystem’s most vulnerable members, there was widespread agreement that the bill would have beneficial impacts if enacted. The webinar was US Inventor’s second on the PREVAIL Act following a virtual call last week with law professor Adam Mossoff and C4IP General Counsel Jamie Simpson.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) yesterday published the eighth installment of its Motion to Amend (MTA) Study, including updated information from March 15, 2019, through March 31, 2023. The study analyzes all motions to amend, including pre-pilot and pilot program motions. Of 469 total motions to amend patent claims since October 1, 2012, 83% (391) were denied; 10% (47) were granted; and 7% (31) were granted in part. According to a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) press release, this year’s report “provides the most comprehensive data regarding the pilot program to date, including additional information on MTA filings by technology.”

The Alliance of U.S. Startups and Inventors for Jobs (USIJ) published a White Paper this week applauding the introduction of the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership (PREVAIL) Act, which was introduced in June. As part of the paper, USIJ presented four case studies demonstrating how some high-profile Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) cases might have played out if the bill’s provisions had already been in force.

The Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property today held a hearing on Oversight of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), with USPTO Director Kathi Vidal as the sole witness. Only a handful of senators questioned Vidal, and only one significantly challenged her in questioning. The hearing differed considerably from the House IP Subcommittee’s Oversight Hearing in April, where Vidal was repeatedly taken to task on the Office’s then-recently issued Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM).

Of the many ways that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) works to the detriment of the U.S. innovation economy, one of the most nefarious is the Chinese government’s use of patent validity review to advance its national interests. Recent briefing filed at the PTAB suggests that the Board is quietly helping China win the war for technological supremacy during the 21st century, mainly by destroying the economic interests of American small businesses innovating in industrial sectors critical to American national security.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday issued a precedential decision affirming a district court’s mixed ruling in a patent infringement case involving two patents owned by United Therapeutics on the pulmonary hypertension drug, Tyvaso.
U.S. Patent 10,716,793 and U.S. Patent 9,593,066 cover methods of treating pulmonary hypertension and pharmaceutical compositions comprising treprostinil—Tyvaso is an inhaled solution formulation of treprostinil. United Therapeutics also owns a new drug application (NDA) for Tyvaso, No. 022387.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced that it is retiring the Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) and extending the Director Review process to decisions on institution in America Invents Act (AIA) proceedings. The POP was established in 2018 under Director Andrei Iancu. Earlier this year, Vidal said that guidance on replacing the POP was one of the issues she expected to announce in the first part of her second year in office.

I was told that elected officials count on—in fact, they need—constituent input to be effective legislators. After my patents were unjustly cancelled at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), I started the journey to do this very thing. Since January of 2022, I have visited Congress and the Senate two dozen times. I have visited over 200 offices telling my story and advocating for the “little” inventors, like me.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential decision finding the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) erred in too narrowly confining its motivation-to-combine inquiry and improperly limiting its definition of the relevant art to hold that Axonics, Inc. had failed to prove Medtronic, Inc.’s patent claims obvious. The patents at issue are Medtronic’s U.S. Patent Nos. 8,626,314 and 8,036,756. They cover “a neurostimulation lead and a method for implanting and anchoring the lead.”

In April, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) requested public input on an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM). The Request for Comments (RFC) allowed the public to voice their opinion on the proposed rules, including hundreds of real, authentic inventors. In the past, US Inventor has asked its members to use their voices and write comments for the USPTO’s requests. Typically, these requests generate at least 100 responses from USI’s members. This time, USI decided to level the playing field and give its members a chance to speak as loudly as its adversaries. We generated nearly 2,400 real comments from inventors, patent holders and concerned individuals. 

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has released an update to its study on multiple Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) petitions that it says demonstrates that serial and parallel petition practice at the PTAB has been decreasing since 2016, when the Office first issued guidance on the subject. Serial petitions are characterized as petitions filed to challenge the same patent more than 90 days after the initial petition, while parallel petitions are those filed 90 days or fewer apart. The report determined the total number of challenges in each fiscal year by looking at how many times a particular petitioner challenged claims of a particular patent.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has granted a rare en banc review of its January, 2023, decision in LKQ Corporation v. GM Global Technology Operations, which affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruling that LKQ failed to show by a preponderance of the evidence that GM’s design patent was anticipated or would have been obvious. U.S. Patent D855,508 covers a “vehicle front skid bar.” In its January decision, the Federal Circuit explained that “applying the tests established in Rosen and Durling, the Board found that LKQ failed to identify a sufficient primary reference, and therefore failed to prove obviousness by a preponderance of the evidence.

Less than one week after a bipartisan group of senators introduced the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership Act (PREVAIL) Act of 2023, the House yesterday introduced a companion bill. The bill is also sponsored on a bipartisan basis by Representatives Ken Buck (R-CO) and Deborah Ross (D-NC). Following the introduction of the PREVAIL Act by Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) last week, Jamie Simpson, who is the Council for Innovation Promotion’s (C4IP) Chief Policy Officer and Counsel and Former Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, told IPWatchdog that it will be important to monitor whether the House introduces companion legislation in the coming weeks. She noted that “it’s really promising that the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate IP Subcommittee are behind these bills. We’re getting closer to a chance of something happening.”

Last week was a big one for the potential future of the U.S. patent system. The deadline for comments on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on “Discretionary Institution Practices, Petition Word-Count Limits, and Settlement Practices for America Invents Act Trial Proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board [PTAB]” was Tuesday, June 20…. Then, on Thursday, Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chris Coons (D-DE), with some help from their colleagues, introduced two new bills that would have major implications for patent eligibility law and PTAB practices, respectively. Below are some other perspectives from a range of IP stakeholders.

Last week, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) launched the long-awaited legislative campaign to revive the faltering U.S. innovation system, jointly introducing one bill to restore patent eligibility and another to boost patent reliability at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).  As the chair and ranking member of the Senate subcommittee on Intellectual Property, they are well-positioned to move these bipartisan bills forward. They got assists from Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI), who joined as original co-sponsors on the PREVAIL Act. While Coons and Tillis are well-placed, Durbin is even more so as he chairs the Judiciary Committee and serves as the number two leader of the majority party.